Having been a regular visitor to Greece over many years and having wonderful memories of meeting many friendly families, I find it heart breaking what is now happening to all those friendly families. The economic chaos brought about by the greedy gambling of the financial Mafia has plunged the ordinary Greek family into a hell-hole of deprivation. Everything that makes a society civilised has gone, health care has disintegrated, medicines are in short supply, the education system has collapsed, unemployment has gone stratospheric. With all this comes the rising drug and alcohol abuse, increase in mental health problems, rising crime, a staggering increase in suicides, and with the cuts, needle exchange centres are closing and HIV is increasing faster in Greece than any other country. The tragedy is that we are not talking about a family, we are talking about an entire country. What was once a modern 20 century country has in a couple of years been plunged back to worse than UK Victorian poverty. What sane and humane system that has an abundance of wealth floating around would tolerate such a crime against humanity. A crime that is well within our resources to resolve. However, it seems to be beyond the ability or desire of this capitalist system to even attempt to alleviate the dire circumstances of the Greek people. Only a society of people controlled communities working on mutual aid and co-operation, structured to see to the needs of all our people will find an answer to the Greek tragedy that is playing out before our eyes.
Read the full article HERE:a report on the situation in greece
1 08 2012During a recent visit to Greece, Eric Chester was able to get some sense of the enormous problems confronting that country.Greeks are very proud of their past, not only the legendary era 2500 years ago, the time of the Parthenon, but more recently when Greeks fought the Nazi invaders. Nevertheless, along with the national pride is a bitter sense of despair, a feeling that there is no way out of the current catastrophe. The number of suicides has been increasing rapidly, as young Greeks try to cope with massive unemployment and the disintegration of the educational system, along with clear indications that the crisis will only grow worse
